Teachers’ reasons for using peer assessment: positive experience predicts use

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10212-015-0282-5Peer assessment (PA) is one of the central principles of formative assessment and assessment for learning (AfL) fields. There is ample empirical evidence as to the benefits for students’ learning when AfL principles are implemented. However, teachers play a critical role in mediating the implementation of intended policies. Hence, their experiences, beliefs, and attitudes towards PA are important factors in determining whether the policy is actually carried out. A survey of over 1500 primary, secondary, and higher education teachers in Spain elicited their beliefs and values around PA as well as other aspects of formative assessment; only 751 teachers provided complete responses to all PA items. Teachers reported occasional use of PA in their classrooms but with positive experience of it. The vast majority did not use anonymous forms of PA and half of the teachers considered the students were accurate when assessing peers. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to examine relationships of attitudes and beliefs to self-reported frequency of using of PA. The self-reported frequency of using PA was strongly predicted by teacher experience of PA which included positive reasons for using PA, rather than negative obstacles for avoiding, prior use, and beliefs that students should participate in assessment, and willingness to include PA in gradingResearch funded by personal grant to Ernesto Panadero under Ramón y Cajal framewok (RYC-2013-13469

Mixing interview and questionnaire methods: Practical problems in aligning data

Structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews are often used in mixed method studies to generate confirmatory results despite differences in methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. A review of 19 questionnaire-interview comparison studies found that consensus and consistency statistics were generally weak between methods. Problems in aligning data from the two different methods are illustrated in a questionnaire-interview study of teacher conceptions of assessment. Poor alignment appeared attributable to: differences in data collection procedures, the complexity and instability of the construct being investigated, difficulties in making data comparable, lack of variability in participant responses, greater sensitivity to context and seemingly emotive responses within the interview, possible misinterpretation of some questionnaire prompts, and greater control of content exposure in the questionnaire. Results indicated that if ‘confirmatory’ results are being sought, researchers must create tightly aligned and structured instruments; present the construct in a simple, concrete, and highly contextualised manner; collect the two types of data with a minimal time gap; and estimate agreement between methods using consistency statistics. However, the cost of confirmation through strong alignment may lead to the loss of rich complementary data obtained through allowing each method to be analysed in its own right.Accessed 152,051 times on https://pareonline.net from January 12, 2010 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

University students’ strategies and criteria during self‑assessment: instructor’s feedback, rubrics, and year level efects

This study explores the effects of feedback type, feedback occasion, and year level on student self-assessments in higher education. In total, 126 university students participated in this randomized experiment under three experimental conditions (i.e., rubric feedback, instructor’s written feedback, and rubric feedback plus instructor’s written feedback). Participants, after random assignment to feedback condition, were video-recorded performing a self-assessment on a writing task both before and after receiving feedback. The quality of self-assessment strategies decreased after feedback of all kinds, but the number of strategies increased for the combined feedback condition. The number of self-assessment criteria increased for rubric and combined conditions, while feedback helped shift criteria use from basic to advanced criteria. Student year level was not systematically related to changes in self-assessment after feedback. In general, the combination of rubric and instructor’s feedback produced the best effectsOpen Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Research funded by Fundación BBVA call Investigadores y Creadores Culturales 2015 (project name Transición a la educación superior id. 122500) and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) National I+D Call (Convocatoria Excelencia) project reference EDU2016-79714-

Formation of dense partonic matter in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC: Experimental evaluation by the PHENIX collaboration

Extensive experimental data from high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions were recorded using the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The comprehensive set of measurements from the first three years of RHIC operation includes charged particle multiplicities, transverse energy, yield ratios and spectra of identified hadrons in a wide range of transverse momenta (p_T), elliptic flow, two-particle correlations, non-statistical fluctuations, and suppression of particle production at high p_T. The results are examined with an emphasis on implications for the formation of a new state of dense matter. We find that the state of matter created at RHIC cannot be described in terms of ordinary color neutral hadrons.Comment: 510 authors, 127 pages text, 56 figures, 1 tables, LaTeX. Submitted to Nuclear Physics A as a regular article; v3 has minor changes in response to referee comments. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm

The effect of high-stakes examination systems on teacher beliefs: Egyptian teachers\u27 conceptions of assessment

Egypt is currently attempting to introduce a greater formative use of assessment while maintaining a public examination system. This study investigates teacher beliefs about the purposes of assessment in Egypt, using the Teachers\u27 Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. The TCoA inventory elicits responses about four main factors: Improvement, School Accountability, Student Accountability and Irrelevance. A large sample of (n = 507) Egyptian pre-service and in-service teachers completed an Arabic version of the TCoA inventory. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the Egyptian teachers\u27 responses against the pre-existing New Zealand model, which was found to be inadmissible. Consequently, an ecologically rational three-factor model was found. The model yielded a strong positive relationship between Improvement and Student Accountability, consistent with previous studies. It is argued that greater changes to the examination system are required if teacher beliefs are expected to be more positive about the priority of formative, improvement-oriented uses of assessment. © 2013 Taylor & Francis

Chinese teachers’ conceptions of assessment for and of learning: Six competing and complementary purposes

As China continues to involve teachers in the implementation of an assessment for learning or formative assessment policy, a clearer understanding of how they conceive of the purposes and functions of assessment is necessary. This paper synthesises eight interview and survey studies, which have examined how diverse samples of practicing teachers in China have described the nature and purpose of assessment. Making use of inductive analyses and factor analytic techniques, variations in the constructs identified in teachers’ thinking are identified and aligned across the study methods. Six major constructs were identified, ranging from the positively regarded ideas that assessment develops the personal qualities and academic abilities of students to the more negatively viewed role of assessment for management and inspection of schools. This framework allows better insights into the challenges policy-makers might have in involving teachers in an effort to reduce negative consequences associated with high-stakes examination systems

The impact of conceptions of assessment on assessment literacy in a teacher education program

Assessment literacy is considered essential to modern teaching. Over time, assessment literacy has evolved to include both measurement and assessment for learning perspectives. At the same time, research into teachers’ conceptions of the purpose and role of assessment demonstrates increasing evidence of the impact of teachers’ conceptions on assessment practices. The conjunction of these two factors, assessment literacy and conceptions of assessment has not been adequately explored. This study addresses this need by examining the impact of a master’s level teacher education course in educational assessment on student teachers’ expressed literacy in and conceptions of assessment. Achievement data were collected and interviews conducted in a class of 32 pre-service and practicing teachers. Inferential analysis and qualitative coding were applied to the data. Analytical results included a strong, polarized affective component. These positive and negative affective conceptions appeared independent of level of academic achievement. Academic achievement appeared to play a role in allowing deeper articulation of conceptions, but did not accompany particular conceptual changes. These findings suggest that while fluency in factual knowledge (i.e. assessment literacy) was enhanced; conceptions of assessment that may influence application of assessment literacy were not changed through the mediating influence of the assessment course. Implications of the results and this apparent disconnection between assessment literacy, teacher education and practice are explored